Destiny
by Pretty P
Summary: She should have known that Fate was something unpredictable. IY-YYH Hiei/Kagome Companion piece to Serendipity.


-1- AN/ It's finally here! The companion piece to _**Serendipity**_ I semi-promised. I hope this one goes over as well as it did.

Told from Kagome's POV.

Written to: Regina Spektor's "The Call"

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_**Destiny**_

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This wasn't how it was supposed to be. Nothing was right.

We had defeated Naraku with no casualties. With Kikyo put to rest, Inuyasha and I were finally free to be together. I had waited for this moment for three years.

But I still waited. There were no declarations of love or even the true love's first kiss that I had dreamed of for so long. He just… pushed on. Towards what, I don't know. We had the whole jewel and nothing else to do except _live._

Maybe it was force of habit for him. Maybe he still didn't know what he wanted to do with the jewel. But we were in limbo, moving neither forward nor backward.

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The well was closed.

In all my fantasies and dreams of my future, it had always included my family. I couldn't imagine life without Mama's sweet words or Souta's annoying questions or even Grandpa's crazy stories.

I was inconsolable for days and understandably so. My only comfort was the knowledge that I still had Inuyasha. He was my stability. No matter what else happened, he was the boat in my life that would keep me afloat.

I survived and I pressed on and I _waited. _

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I didn't have to wait long.

Relief from the monotony of everyday life in the Feudal Era came not in the form of a romance-stricken hanyou as I had hoped but rather in a less assuming figure.

He was small and so young. He looked younger than me, perhaps like I expected my little brother would appear if I could see him now. But his claret eyes burned with barely contained fury. Not at anyone in particular, I think, but I somehow got the impression that rage was an ever-present aspect of his mood.

He was alone and hurt, and bleeding so badly.

I don't know what possessed me to approach him as I did. He was dangerous, I could tell. He had come up on us so fast it was as if he had simply appeared on the road. He could kill me if he had wanted to. I don't know how, but intuition told me he wouldn't.

As I bandaged him, his eyes so suspicious and his body so tense as if ready for a fight at any moment, I realized that he was hurt on the inside, too.

It wouldn't be the last time I saw this little demon, not by a long shot.

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For a while, I was sure I was imagining it: the flashes of black through the trees, the red eyes following me in the dark. But one evening as I made my way back to camp, having just had my bath, I saw him again and I knew it wasn't coincidence.

He sat at the edge of a cliff overlooking a ravine, the wind at his back ruffling the shock of spiked black and white hair. I was sure he would have sensed me, but he never lifted his eyes from the little jewel he held in his palm. It was quite lovely, swirling with shades of blue and white.

His face was lax and devoid of the hate that usually shown there. His eyes were soft as he gazed into the gem, having lost their razor edge. The setting sun behind him set his silent form ablaze in hues of red and orange, making his hair seem even more flame-like. He was truly beautiful in that moment.

I wondered what that jewel was to him, if it was a burden like the Shikon that hung about my neck was to me or if it was a precious treasure to him.

I wondered about him all the way back to camp.

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Sango and Miroku married just before winter came, and I couldn't help but feel the tiniest bit of resentment. It was wrong of me, I know, but how could I not when Inuyasha hadn't even _mentioned_…

But I held my tongue and I smiled. I smiled for them and for my own sanity.

_Soon_, I kept telling myself. _Soon._

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We stayed close to Kaede's village during the colder bouts of weather.

With the trees stripped of their leaves and the forest blinding white with the falling snow, I began to see the little demon more often. In the summer and even the fall, I suppose it had been easy to keep himself hidden. But his all black ensemble stuck out like a sore thumb in the frozen forest.

I tried talking to him when no one was around. I told him about my frustrations with Inuyasha and my worries about the future. He never responded, but I knew he was there and listening.

I was grateful for that. I felt better after talking to him and secretly likened our one-sided conversations to a sort of youkai therapy.

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I suppose I should have seen it coming.

I had known we were growing distant, that I was rapidly losing ground, but had blinded myself to reality in the hope that everything would work out.

Inuyasha left us, leaving the jewel with me. I had grown strong, he said, and he had faith in me that I could protect myself. It was a small consolation, the smallest, to hear such high praise from him. I knew he was sincere.

I had always held out hope that somehow, something would happen and he would open his eyes. That he would finally see me. I had convinced myself that it was destiny that had brought us together. What other explanation was there for an ancient, dried-up well on my family's shrine that happened to carry me back five hundred years into the past to awaken a cursed hanyou?

It seemed our paths had crossed only briefly, but they weren't meant to merge as I had always thought. Maybe it wouldn't be the last time we met, but our paths were separate. We had reached a fork in the road that I hadn't realized was there.

I didn't follow him. It wouldn't have done any good.

For the first time, I felt lost. My present, my future, was falling apart and I could do nothing to stop it. I had planned my life around this hanyou, and without him, what was there?

What was left?

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Sango and Miroku left, too, to rebuild her village. I wasn't surprised, but that didn't stop the tears.

I was holding them back, I realized, and I had to let them go. It wasn't fair for them to have to keep their lives on hold just because I was stuck.

Kirara stayed with me, as did Shippo.

We would survive, I knew, but at the time I couldn't see how.

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I started to see him more often.

I would have thought that with the return of the summer foliage, he could have kept himself hidden more easily. But I saw him everywhere, always following me and always watching with those intense, burning embers for eyes.

Did he want me to see him?

I wondered why he stayed after everyone had left. I didn't think he wanted the Shikon. If he had wanted it, I was sure he could have taken it. Even if I had learned to control my powers, I was still only human and I had to sleep.

If it wasn't the jewel, what could it be?

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When he showed no signs of losing interest in this monotonous routine we had fallen into, I began to consider the little demon who watched from the distance.

It had not escaped my notice that we had come up on fewer and fewer youkai with our deaths on their agenda. He was protecting us. The realization made me smile.

To show my thanks, I did things for him. Little things.

I left noodles out for him at dinner. And I tried my best to entertain him. At night, I told him stories about my childhood and legends and myths my Grandpa told me when I was little. It was nice having someone there. It must seem silly, I realize, that I would accept a complete stranger so readily into my life. But I could feel it, somewhere deep, that I needed to keep him close. At the time, it wasn't a conscious decision or even an acknowledged feeling. It was an urge. An _instinct _that I could neither identify nor ignore.

By now, he had become as much a part of my life as the sun and the moon, and no less important.

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There was something savage in him. I could feel it sometimes in his stare.

I don't think it was directed at me, but he had such a bloodlust in his eyes. Many, many times I would stumble upon the corpses of demons, all with the telltale clean cuts across the throat or chest. I didn't know why he had killed them, but I knew that he had enjoyed it. The feeling in the air wasn't one of oppressive anger or vengeance or anything of the like.

It felt like fear and adrenaline and pure _joy. _

I pondered it for a long time, chewed on it until my jaw was sore. In my years traveling the ancient Japanese countryside my perceptions of good and evil had been stretched and warped beyond recognition. I had learned that one who saved wasn't always good and one didn't have to be evil to kill.

He made me think.

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He was lonely, I realized one evening when he dropped into our camp, for the first time since we had met facing me with no trees or hills to hide behind. His eyes danced in the firelight like the most beautiful gems.

His voice was low and pleasant, not what I had expected from his appearance.

For the most part, he asked questions and I answered. He didn't talk much, so I tried to make up for it by talking a lot. I don't think he minded and I liked the chance to get things off my chest. I was surprised to find myself flirting with him. Actually _flirting _with a youkai I only knew from the brief glimpses of him I had caught as he flickered through the trees like a flame.

I felt like a schoolgirl. It was a ridiculous notion, but I couldn't deny the novelty of the situation.

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I had unintentionally fallen into the role of a wandering priestess, offering my services to those in need. The irony wasn't lost on me.

He began to join us for meals and eventually walked with us as we traveled around the region surrounding the well. He kept watch over us while we slept, usually at night perching himself on the tree above my sleeping bag or keeping to the roof when we were offered room and board in a village.

When we stopped for a rest or when the day was slow with the languor of a summer afternoon, we would talk about the past, but never the future. I don't think either of us felt secure enough in our own places in this world to even begin to speculate. We didn't make plans or hopes or dreams. We lived in the moment.

Because that's the only thing we knew how to do.

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It had taken a while, but Shippo and Kirara eventually warmed up to him.

In the evenings, after he had done his scouting around the camp -because he was always watching and always listening- Kirara would find a spot in his lap and he would stroke her absentmindedly. I already knew I could trust him, but the little nekomata's faith in him convinced me.

Shippo liked to ask him questions. Where did he learn to use the sword? Did he know any special moves? Was his fire anything like fox-fire?

For the most part, he only answered him in short, curt sentences. I think he was uncomfortable around him, but he did his best to adjust. I just don't think he knew how to act around children.

I wasn't sure he had ever been a child himself.

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It was nearing fall. It seemed like so much longer than just a year that I had known him. He had filled a void in my life. He had been the lifeline that I needed when the raging, churning sea had threatened to drown me. I knew, without a doubt, that without him I wouldn't have survived.

I could never tell him how much he meant to me, but I planned to show him someday. Someday soon.

It was love for sure; I knew the feeling well enough to identify that little blossom of warmth in my chest. I worried for him when he wasn't near me, and I missed him. I found myself wishing I could just see his face and hear his voice and smell that woody, smoky scent of his that I was so rarely treated to when he got close enough.

But at the same time, I knew it was different. It was different from any love I had ever felt before.

I know it's unfair of me to compare, but with Inuyasha… I think I could describe my love for Inuyasha as a fire. A fierce, all-consuming fire that was doused just as quickly as it had sprung up in my heart. It was quick and violent. It was _infatuation_.

But with him, it was a little burning ember that grew with each glance and each word, feeding it and nurturing it. It was slow and continuous, and not something that fluctuated with the wind. It was _solid. _

I felt for him not the sort of love of a dear family member or a friend or even a lover. It was the love of something precious and irreplaceable. It was the love such as one might feel for air. I wasn't just happy to have him with me, I _needed_ him with me.

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I knew what was about to happen, just before I was blinded by a pink light and the sensation of falling overwhelmed me. I felt the swell of power just before I was transported, inexplicably and irrevocably, back to my own era.

I was shocked and confused, and the look on his face I knew would never leave me.

For a long time, I sat in the cold dirt at the bottom of the well. I was afraid to look up, afraid of what I would see.

Just when I had been rebuilding, just when I had started planning. Just when I had seen my future, the jewel ripped it away from me again. I couldn't understand.

It couldn't be helped. I wept.

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But there was hope still. I didn't search for it and I didn't want it at first. But it found me.

I learned of the existence of a Spirit World. It was so strange, but it made perfect sense. The ruler of sorts contacted me about the Shikon that I still kept around my neck. No matter how much I hated the thing, I wouldn't part with it. We argued constantly about it.

It was on such a day that a miracle happened.

I was fighting Koenma with all my ire for guardianship of the jewel. He knew and I knew that it belonged with me. But he wouldn't have it.

There was a knock on the door and in walked a ghost.

A beautiful, red-eyed ghost.

Shock, joyous, rapturous shock gripped me and seized my lungs. I could hardly breath or think or do much of anything.

So I only smiled.

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I don't think I ever really believed in fate before Hiei.

After everything that had happened, after the well closed and Inuyasha left, I'm ashamed to say that I lost faith in the gods and this crazy, fairytale world they threw me into. But then, he walked into Koenma's office and it was like my life had come full circle. Suddenly, everything made sense and the enormity of it left me breathless.

My life, everything that I had ever done, every little experience, had brought me closer to this man. With the clouds of present in my eyes, I couldn't have seen it. But looking back, I realize it was destiny that brought us together. I understood now why I had been thrown into the past, why I had met Inuyasha, and even why I had been trapped in an era that wasn't my own when I thought my journey had been complete.

But the journey had just begun.

And I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that from the very start, from the beginning of time itself, Hiei and I had been destined for each other.

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End file.
